Arlington Pastor: Local Couples Aren’t Having Enough Sex

A pastor of a local Arlington church says married couples in the area are too stressed and not having enough sex.

John Slye, senior pastor at Grace Community Church, is two weeks into an eight week sermon series that the church has dubbed “Smokin’ Hot.” A mailer sent to local households took the unconventional step (for a church) of promoting the sermon series with the boldfaced words: “Dating. Sex. Marriage. Porn.”

Though the marketing is unquestionably provocative, the overarching goal of the sermon series is improving relationships. Syle says that all too often, intimacy is lacking from marriages and mutual understanding is missing from relationships.

Slye says stress is often the culprit when there’s not enough sex in a marriage. He said there’s even a term for it: DINS, or “Dual Income, No Sex.”

“We see this in Washington, D.C.,” Slye said. “I mean, there’s so much stress here, we have so many Type A people, and we’re just hard chargers. And sex, even among married couples, is just dropping dramatically because of all the stress.”

Syle says physical intimacy — kissing and sex — is a key component of marriages, and shouldn’t be pushed to the wayside.

“In a marriage, sex is meant to be a really positive thing,” he said. “It’s meant to be the glue that holds the husband and wife together. It’s powerful, and that’s what the Bible speaks about.”

“A lot of times when couples first get married, the sex between them is really bonding, but after a while… it either goes away or dries up,” Slye added. “Eventually, married couples — a lot of them — they’re having sex but they’re not kissing. And eventually they’re not even having sex. And you’ve got to do these certain things to instill the passion.”

Another disconnect in marriages and relationships comes from a lack of mutual understanding, says Slye.

“A man has a certain set of love buttons, and a woman has a certain set of love buttons,” he said. “By default, we think that the other sex’s love buttons are the same as ours. And we’re, like, pushing those buttons and it’s doing nothing for them. We have to learn what the opposite sex’s love buttons are, so we have to be real students.”

“Arlington is one of the smartest areas in the country,” he continued. “But we have to be great students, we have to study this person that we’re in a relationship with harder than we study for our PhD, or Masters, or whatever… Both [partners] need to bring something to the table, and they both need to understand each other.”

Slye’s sermon series is based on the Old Testament’s Song of Solomon, which he describes as “the relationship book of the Bible.”

“We call it ‘Smokin’ Hot’ because there’s a lot of smokin’ hot stuff that happens in the Song of Solomon,” he said, adding that the verses contain lessons for couples and singles alike. “It really strikes a huge relevancy factor for people.”

As far as porn and sex outside of marriage, the sermon series isn’t nearly as scandalous as the provocative mailer seems to suggest.

“Pornography is exploding and having some bad repercussions in people’s lives, both in single people’s lives and married people’s lives,” Slye explained. “So we thought we would talk about that.”

For those who are dating, Slye said sex should “unfold on a proper timetable.”

“Introducing physical intimacy into a relationship too early… could really have a bad effect on a relationship,” he said.

Though Slye admitted that the “Smokin’ Hot” mailing was a bit atypical for a church, he pointed out that it’s somewhat fitting for Grace, which bills itself as “a church for people who don’t go to church.”

The church, which meets Sundays at 9:30 and 11:00 a.m. at Thomas Jefferson Middle School (125 S. Old Glebe Road), is non-denominational and takes pride in its “informal” services, which eschew formal liturgies and preaching for bands and sermons that are “a little more conversational in style.”

Syle says the church has no formal membership, but notes that the crowd on Sundays is about 50 percent married and 50 percent single, with an average age around 30. There is no dress code and congregants often show up in jeans, shorts or flip flops, Slye said.

The mailing seems to have helped bring more people to the church.

“From the mailing alone… we got at least 100 people” to show up at the first ‘Smokin’ Hot’ service, Syle said. “We’ve actually gotten pretty good responses from people.”

Maybe the point is that if more people got laid, properly, on a regular basis, there’d be less evil in the world.

“Make love, not Powerpoint presentations?”

“Put down that spreadsheet, and get between the sheets?”

To quote Woody Allen, “In France, I could run on that slogan and win.”

original… oh wait

I don’t really care about the topic or think his thoughts are entirely wrong, but plagiarism should be a sin … Someone watched GCB a few weeks ago. Funny show… but shouldn’t necessarily be inspiration for real life sermons. Someone saw tv pastor and said “hey, it worked for that guy in that show… maybe I’ll get some ‘cool’ points and put some butts in the seats”. Yikes. Good leadership skills…

not original…but not the point

…and GCB stole the idea, too. Nothing new under the sun. Just google “pastor encourages more sex”. But novelty really isn’t the point, is it? And it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with good leadership skills. Good leaders may use whatever teaching tools – old or new – they want to teach/lead/speak to their team.

ineptsocialfailure

What about us inept social failures that can’t get the time of day from women? Do you think we aren’t getting enough sex?

People don’t want to go to church. They would rather sleep in. And acting desperate by pandering to a ‘hot’ topic won’t make you any more popular.

drax

If I have to go to church, though, I’m going to this one.

Shaking my head

WOW it is amazing how many of you all judge before you even listen to his preaching. Go to the Church website and listen to the sermon, you might learn something.

SomeGuy

I concur with you that the sermons are good. And I have listened to more than one. Very educational, in fact, as Slye does a good job of giving context to biblical passages that don’t easily make sense if you don’t understand the history.

In other words, even for people who don’t “believe” in what the bible says, they could learn something about it from a literary standpoint.

South Awwlington

Ripped right from GCB two weeks ago.

Novanglus

GCB ripped that plotline from actual churches who’ve done this series, not the other way around.

Nothing at church should be original anyway, it should all be based on the bible.

Bard

not enough married sex, too much unmarried sex, too much gay sex. churches really think about sex a lot.

It Is A Tough Job,,,,

But someone has to do it !!

meh..

Ummm…..acronym happy people….WHAT IS GCB???? is it that hard to type out the full name of something?? sheeesh.

Though it’s been said what the acronym stands for online, the actual show is only titled GCB… people aren’t being short handed to save time if you searched for the show in a guide you won’t find it by searching “good christian…”

Married couples aren’t having enough sex with each other, it should read.

Former resident

I hope there weren’t kids in the congregation when this sermon hapened.

I was in a Catholic service in South Riding once when the priest totally went off on abortion. In graphic details he tried to prove he knew more about abortion than everyone else. My five year old asked what is an abortion on the car ride home. We never went back.

Dumb’d

Isn’t it possible that married couples aren’t having sex because they don’t want kids?

http://purple.com/purple.html Captain Pup McPuppo

everyone in arlington so horny!!!!! *masturbates in public while some other dudes watch me and masturbate themselves in arlington*